My hair acceptance journey started at 21 years old when I moved to Jamaica for 5 years.

I quickly understood that altering my hair nature while being confronted to a weather such as the Jamaican one was pure nonsense.

In Jamaica, people used to call my hair "pretty hair" but wouldn’t say the same about kinky afro hair.

This was a real confidence boost, but I have to admit that I was also too ignorant at the time to understand how insulting it was. Insulting towards my black sisters who were rocking their natural kinky afros.

Once, I asked a hairdresser for a blow-dry but she convinced me to let her put what she called "cream" on my hair, to make it even straighter.

I didn’t know what she meant by "cream" but was very enthusiastic about the potential end result. It was too late when I realised it was actual relaxer.

This turning point pushed me to take the best decision I ever took: the big chop! I will never forget how reluctant the hairdresser was when I asked her to do it. I then took the razor in my hand and did it myself.

Feeling the vibrations on my head and seeing my hair falling off was the most liberating experience ever!

I really feel like we’ve been conditioned to believe that to be beautiful we need to look like our European counterparts. But you know what? They want to be us, they want the bum, the lips, and the curls!

We are blessed to be the way we are. We have just been told to look down on it way too much.

We, black women, need to embrace our naturalness and be strong advocates of it.